Unmute Dance Company

Monday, 24 August 2015

Andile Vellem (Artistic Director of Unmute Dance Company)

UnmuteDance Company (UDACO) is an
integrated company of artists with mixed abilities or ‘disabilities’ whose
vision is to inspire the inclusion of ‘disabled’ persons into the main stream
society through cutting edge and original performances, workshops and exchange
programs etc.

The companycame into
existence in 2013 after Youngblood Arts and Culture Development had funded a
creation process of a work entitled “Unmute”,
which was later supported by National Arts Council, Dance Forum South Africa
and British Council. The work is choreographed by Andile Vellem (Artistic
Director of Unmute Dance Company), it is based on his experience as a dancer
who is deaf and has been dancing professionally for more than 13 years. “Unmute” is a way of Andile finding his
voice as a choreographer, using sign language as the source of the movement
vocab. With this creation he brought together artists from different
backgrounds to find and explore what they would like to un-mute; feelings,
perceptions, social norms and expectations; while endeavouring to deconstruct
what society perceives as dance. After a successful reception of ‘Unmute’
performance UDACO was formed to continue this work of Arts and Ability
integration.

UDACO is currently the only existing Integrated Dance
Company in South Africa, based in Cape Town as part of the Artscape Resource
Centre Incubator programme. With its
cutting edge works it has been invited to be part of South Africa’s merger arts
festivals like Johannesburg Dance Umbrella Festival, Cape Town’s Infecting The
City, Gipca’s Live Art Festival etc. The company continues to reach to schools
and communities through Outreach performances and workshops that promotes
integration.

About Me

Un-mute Dance Project is a Performing Arts Company whose vision is to inspire inclusion of people with disabilities within the society through performances, artistic workshops and exchange programs that encourage activism and awareness of integration. We are a company of artists with mixed abilities/disabilities using Physical Theatre, Contemporary and Integrated Dance. We aim to address and challenge people’s state of mental-misconception on disabilities, we encourage people to break barriers and realize that we are all abled and have our own abilities and no one is confined by physical limitations. Having a disability doesn’t make any person less a human or less capable, therefore removing shame from people is our company’s mission towards building an integrated society.